I can't live without ActiveX.... just kidding! hmm.... I'm kinda used to the IE interface - habit I guess. Been using it for years, since I never liked Netscape. Also, Firefox doesn't *seem* as snappy. On slower machines it takes ages to start up.

Qemu is damn fast, in my experience ; I wouldn't dare quantify it, but running win 98 under qemu on a 900 Mhz Athlon is perfectly OK, and it is impressive, quality-wise. Moreover, if host and target cpu are identical, there's a fast version of qemu to avoid unecessary emulations - didn't try that one, though, because it segfaulted on my FC2, and I was happy enough with the regular emulator so I didn't bother to investigate the issue any further (I did the build from CVS, so I expected glitches).

Wrong. QEMU is a full system emulator. There is a processor module availble that virtualizes the CPU instead of emulating, but it is closed-source and linux-only. As such the windows version of QEMU is a full blown emulator.

I've recently been looking into running Linux on my primary desktop to record music with. I could never get the Knoppix live CD to run correctly on my Gateway X700 system. I'll have to try this version and see if I can get anything to work.

Linux has been a frustration of mine for the past 4 years. I know a smattering of Unix commands and even armed with that I still can't ever seem to get a program downloaded and working like I can with windows. I'm looking forward to trying it again before I make the

That's not true. Ardour may not be DP4, but it certainly is acceptable for certain recording situations. Less-than-optimal, yes. Certainly. Less-than-user-friendly, yeah. Undoubtedly. And, as you said, it is showing a lot of promise. But utterly unacceptable? No. I've used it and a whole slew of LADSPA plugins to do some nice remixes of material I recorded for a personal album about 10 years ago. Sounds fine, works well enough. I gotta tell you, it's amazing how many tracks and plugins you can get ope

From the reports I've seen, qemu is VERY slow. Is there an advantage to qemu over coLinux? I've been using coLinux to give me Linux under Windows for about a year now, and there is a lot to be said for native execution speed. You also get networking, and recently easy access of the native Windows filesystems without employing samba-type file sharing.

Of course, it's difficult to deny the power of running a gameboy emulator on a GBA emulator on a Linux emulator on a Windows emulator on your Mac...

From the reports I've seen, qemu is VERY slow. Is there an advantage to qemu over coLinux?

Sure, even when you restrict it to the presently relevant set of cases (x86/Linux inside x86/Win32): coLinux has no (non-experimental) framebuffer support; the experimental version that does exist has its performance measured in seconds per frame. The only way to run X is by having an X server on your Windows box, and you can't run Qt/E or GtkFB or such at all. If you want to do embedded systems development, this can be a substantial issue.

If you don't restrict yourself to that subset of cases, then QEMU wins on account of having support for far more than just a custom build of the Linux kernel. (Want to play with FreeDOS? Test your new build of of GRUB? Run through the SLES9 installer? The first two of these simply aren't possible in coLinux, and the 3rd one requires a lot of work to make it happen).

Also, COFS is so experimental/unstable I'm not sure I'd claim it as a feature yet.

You can also do X via vnc with colinux. Actually, I was thinking of putting together a knoppix/colinux disk that uses modified cygwin/x and/or vnc (cygwin would need to be modified so that it doesn't need registry entries)

CoLinux works like a charm using VNC: you run a VNC server on the Linux side and a VNC client on the Windows side. A side-benefit is that you can actually disconnect from the coLinux process and reconnect later.

As far as I'm concerned, coLinux is the only way to go for running Linux under Windows these days; it is superior in just about every way to any of the commercial or free solutions.

I'm uploading at over 1MB/s and only getting 100K/s downstream. Acording to the stats there are NO seeds but lots of peers. Usually that means that the entire torrent is being held up because at least one complete copy has not been downloaded.

CoLinux is also a very handy package for running linux on windows. It installs linux on a single file on your HD, then runs linux on it, and you can access it throught VNC. So you can have windows and linux sharing the same machine and HD, running at the same time, on different windows. Pretty handy.

Currently 9 seeds and 542 peers, this is a good test of torrent scalability. Even if it takes a while to ramp up, this would kill just about any server on the net, kind of amazing how any of this works at all.:-)

You know, i have seen naruto torrents with 10000 seeds and 25000 peers and no problem.Just like with http, you need a strong enough server. If you have your tracker on a dsl line running on a via c3, not even bittorrent will be able to help you.

without the need to reboot. Run them side by side and compare the features.

It is, after all, emulation, so don't expect to break speed records with it. Also that IP connection limitation in XP won't be broken by running KNOPPIX in an emulator.

Now KNOPPIX can join the ranks of MacOS 8.1 (BasiliskII), AmigaOS 3.1 (Amiga Forever), as yet another OS emulated under Windows.

The advantage I see for this is that web developers will finally be able to check how their web pages look under different browsers and operating systems without having to reboot Windows each time they want to look how it looks under Linux.

The next step is to make KNOPPIX run AntiVirus, AntiSpyware, AntiAdware, and AntiTrojan removal programs and make any FAT32, FAT16, or NTFS partition as read/write so the Malware can be removed. Yet what is the point when you can run the KNOPPIX HD Install script and get rid of Windows and all of its flaws that allow Malware to be installed in the first place.

P.S. I am moving to KANOTIX now, it seems to be a bit better than KNOPPIX.

a) QEMU is all open source. A small part recently added is non-free but still open-source.b) QEMU is the fastest (99%) Free emulator, and QEMU is getting faster all the time. There is a strong emphasis on speed by Fabricec) Yes Knoppix will run slower under emulation than natively, and Knoppix doesn't run as fast as a native Linux install. But there are obvious speedups laying around. This looks like a first cut by some developer.

But I think there is one obvious case where this can be useful, in the particular situation where a machine is locked down so that you can't boot install CDs without a password, and the user does not have admin priveleges. Also, it may be useful for users who aren't willing to boot a Linux CD since they are afraid that it will wipe something out.

QEMU has the right emphasis from the beginning. To make something that is fast and usable.

And that's what it is, on several platforms. It's got the momentum, why divide up resources? QEMU will run on more platforms, and is getting the same virtualization goodies as Xen. The tiny virtualization kernel is open source but non-free till Fabrice can get some funding, but have some faith based on his entire body of Free software contributions that it will also b

They're going to end up convincing dumb windows users that Linux is slow as hell!

Of course, Knoppix already did this, because running and booting from a live cd is painfully slow anyhow. So now the slowness will double (unless it just cancels out, such as by the IO delays happening in parrellel with the CPU emulation lag, somehow)

Following the QEMU list, this was done some time back by a Japanese developer Kuniyasu Suzaki I believe.

Discussions ensued about how to make it faster... some patches are available to directly mount the compressed Knoppix volume so that portion doesn't need to be emulated. Also, the SaveVM feature was improved, so rather than boot knoppix, just keep a compressed VM ram image on the Knoppix CD. That makes it boot instantaneously.

QEMU is the fastest thing going as far as Free emulators, given more improvements on the virtualization side, I think this will be *the* way to run Knoppix for Windows users that just want to try it out. The speed will come in time.

Some of us pushed for features like User Mode Networking in QEMU just for this purpose. Windows users in larger corporations often do not have administrator level rights, so they can't install any special drivers. So Knoppix under QEMU can get right to the net on any Windows box that will run a.EXE from CD.

QEMU is the fastest thing going as far as Free emulators, given more improvements on the virtualization side, I think this will be *the* way to run Knoppix for Windows users that just want to try it out. The speed will come in time.

No, I think the way will be CoLinux, which already runs a lot faster than QEMU, and which will (in upcoming releases) give far better integration with the host OS.

QEMU is useful for lots of purposes, but for running Linux under Windows, coLinux is a better tool in my experienc

Now all they need to do is add the following ability to make it perfect:

1. Allow people to apt-get packages while the CD is running. Then...
2. Import user files from Win into a Knoppix-side directory. Finally...
3. (this is the important one) Press a button and presto! The system builds an ISO of original winknoppix+packages+userfiles that is a no-fuss super-customized knoppix CD!

If they could make that... then a seamless transition to Linux goodness would finally be within reach for everyone!

I have used DSL (Damn Small Linux) before and been able to use it on some users machine to log in to the server quickly with my SSH keys all setup on the key. When I am done, I kill it. I love this because I can use it on any machine I have and be able to test scripts and such on my machine without risking any of the stuff on the local machine. Will it run slow? Yeah, but if you have a ton of RAM and speedy processor(preferably 1 GHz or faster) it should run just fine.

My workplace won't let me download torrents. We have an anal Network Access Control Policy that not only blocks the ports that bittorrent requires (on a globally routable subnet) but we have snort configured to detect any use of bittorrent. Peer-to-peer applications (all) are banned under our IT access policy and if it's detected, we get our network port disabled.

Do they have a Bugzilla for this? I was trying to get this going under Windowsand was unable to. I alsonoticed the batch file that comes with this tries to start this with 1 GB of ram. If my machine has 1 GB of ram and I boot Windows and try to get this to run and it asks for 1 GB, I am going to have...issues.:D I have tried 2 separate machines and was unsuccessful to get this to boot in QEMU on windows. DSL works fine. Better then fine. It's worked on almost every PC I tried it on including the sam

Maybe I just know a lot of stupid people but if you run linux under windows, your average user won't understand that linux actually replaces windows. A lot of people just assume to see the little magic start button when they power up. Booting directly into linux helps simple folk (in regards to their technological prowess) realize that windows isn't magically built into the hardware and doesn't need to boot for the computer to run.

Here's another option, designed for a USB key. It runs Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. all in a virtual linux machine. The release is planned to work on GNU/Linux, ms windows and mac os x, although the current release candidate doesn't work on the mac. It also uses qemu, of course. More info: Portable Virtual Privacy Machine [metropipe.net].

Knoppix 3.7 couldn't detect my computer's onboard sound, so I couldn't really play around with it for most of the things that I usually do with my PC. Are there any changes or anything that could make this worth downloading and installing, either in Knoppix or in Linux (I believe 3.8 has a newer kernel than 3.7?), or is there possibly anything more I could do with Knoppix 3.7 to get it to work? I tried configuring the sound drivers, but the automatic configuration failed every time and I wasn't willing to c

What is the point?
What is the point of art?
What is the point of music?
What is the point of climbing everest?
What is the point of spinners?
I digress. . .
The point is well - hey it is cool! ( I think):)

It's a very interesting hack, I agree, but it cannot be used as the swiss army knife technique that it's best for (IMO) without having to reboot Windows. After all, you can't snag that SAM file without the system being offline. It's a great way to try it out though... I just wouldn't depend on the stability of it around the Windows OS. Hopefully it won't crash and give the user a bad impression. And hopefully some Windows fan won't put some bad code to make it crash so that the user just sticks with Windows

You're right about Knoppix not needing an installation process, but in the case of naive Windows users, even asking them to reboot can be a scary concept for them.

The other case where I can see this being useful is when you're trying to demonstrate Knoppix to someone and they already have work running on their Windows desktop - spreadsheets, telnet sessions, and things of that nature. If they can see Linux running within a window, they'll be much more likely to play around with it since they know that t

but in the case of naive Windows users, even asking them to reboot can be a scary concept for them.

Hmm, I think you're exaggerating a bit... Windows users should (and I'm not even joking) be quite used to booting and rebooting their systems. Even my mom would understand the implications of restarting the computer.

...but in the case of naive Windows users, even asking them to reboot can be a scary concept for them.

OK, people are asking why this is scary. Here's why:

You reboot, and suddenly, all this small text in bright colours is crawling across your screen (at least, that's what Knoppix did, the last time I tried it). Your Windows environment is gone. You don't know if it's coming back, or even if it's reformatting your hard drive, that's what it's supposed to look like, right?

Yeah, I know, this crap is irrational. But guess what, if the world was purely rational, Microsoft would have gone out of business ages ago...

Having Knoppix run on the Windows desktop is reassuring. It lets you know that Windows is still there and you can return there at any time, and since all your icons are still on your desktop, your files must therefore be safe. Yeah, more irrational fears, sorry, but that's how many people think.

Cluster Knoppix has been around for a while, i think i have some releases dating 2001-2002, and i noticed that the torrent tracker the poster linked to hosts the.torrent for the current release of Cnoppix. 12-04 IIRC.A side note: being that the poster was smart enough to link to a torrent tracker in the story, I'm interested to see just how big this torrent will get, as i speak, the tracker lists over 800 hosts, 200+ seeds and over 600 leechers. The largest torrent i've ever seen was on bt.etree.org [etree.org] with

That's . . . very, very odd. I've often been able to max out my bandwidth with torrents (though not nowadays, considering that I'm at the university residence . . . faster even than my prior aDSL, true, but if I let it go, I'd break my weekly download/upload limits damn quickly!). There are many things that could be going wrong. One of the problems often encountered, which is the most likely cause since I've seen similar same symptoms on many a computer, is your router. Part of the reason I've never had

Isn't the idea that a slashdotting is the best case scenario for a torrent? Provided, of course, that the traffic ramps up gradually so that there is a significant body of (different) data distributed.

My aunt is doing a computing course at university. While she was at college, before uni, she'd never seen Linux, so I sent her a KNOPPIX CD.

She refused to run it. She thouth "KNOPPIX" meant "no pics" as in "no graphics."

I explained what it was but she still refused to try it, because all the r4d d00dz on her course told her that Linux was an abomination, unclean, and not to be let near a Windows PC. Windows was the best OS in the world, and that dodgy Linux thing might mess up your PC.